Page 147 of War Queen
“I never lied to you.”
“That’s all you’ve done! Deception is a lie, whether you spoke the words directly or not. And you”—she sucked in a breath—“you made yourself him. You showed yourself as Alexander.” The worst lie of all.
He quieted. The earth changed below her feet, and they stood in a sun-filled forest. These visions were not from her memory. He was choosing the locations. He was creating the vision around them.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
His apology surprised her, but it wasn’t enough. “You’re sorry you tried to kill me?”
He shifted his weight back.
“That’s right, I know. I know it was you who sent the assassins. It was you who spoke through them.”
He eyed her before answering. “I’ve done many terrible things I should probably be sorry for. Many I’m not, but”—he paused—“that has become one.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because you were the wife of the Shadow King. And Alexander’s queen—I knew it would destroy him.”
“You did it to hurt Alexander?”
“I did it to hurt them both,” he snapped. His eyes blazed, and the forest around them darkened.
Yes—he’d come for vengeance. She remembered. “Why?”
He drew in a long breath, and the sun returned. But he didn’t answer.
“You said you would explain everything.” That was why she’d called him. “Explain.”
He swept his eyes to the trees in hesitation, then back to her. “Where do you want me to start?”
Norah sat on a fallen tree. “From the beginning,” she said as she crossed her arms. “What are you?” She had already guessed a traveler seer, but he hadn’t actually acknowledged it.
He nodded slowly and sat on the opposite end of the tree. He took his time, wiping his hand over the bottom half of his face. “The Evil is what my mother called it. I didn’t know how I was able to do it, get inside her mind, but I could. Not Alexander’s, but I could hers.”
Caspian had said their mother had gone mad. Was it madness? Or was it Lucien?
“I would have dreams,” he continued. “Some were… terrible things. The worst was when I was scared. I just wanted to be near her, but she cast me out. I tried to show her.”
Norah’s chest tightened. To be a child…
He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees and his hands clasped. The landscape around them turned to winter. “I was so young, but I remember. I remember how she took me away. And left me in the forest.” Snow blanketed the ground around them now. The trees stood like skeletons, stripped of their leaves. “I ran after her as she rode away. I ran until my legs wouldn’t work and I couldn’t feel my face for the cold.” His voice was stoic, unemotional. “I fell, and I lay there, looking up at the tops of the trees, calling out for her. For my father. Calling out for Alexander. And that’s how I was found.”
Caspian said Lucien had died of a sickness. That must have been what his mother had told everyone. A pain seeped deeper into her heart.
“Who found you?” she asked, softer now.
He seemed to snap back to the present, and the corner of his mouth turned up. “By fate or by luck, the man who came upon me had a wife. They had for a long time tried to conceive a child but couldn’t.” Lucien smiled to himself. “And they raised me as their own.”
Norah exhaled out a small breath of relief.
But then Lucien chuckled darkly and shook his head. “No. That’s not what happened. It’s what I imagined had happened many times over in my life. How… different… things would have been. But that’s not what happened.”
Norah’s stomach twisted.
He stood, and the earth swirled under her feet again. Everything went dark. She staggered up but couldn’t see.
When his voice came, it was all around her. “I was found by a demon in the night, and he took me to his hell.”
